Where we can still find hope

Robert Reich -  Many of you ask me where I get my hope from, notwithstanding.

Three sources.

First, from all the young people I work with every day. They’re enormously dedicated, committed to making the world better. They’ll inherit this mess, and they’re ready to clean it up and strengthen our democracy. They also have extraordinary energy. And they’re very funny. It is impossible not to be hopeful around them.

Second, from history. We are now in a second Gilded Age that, like the first one (from the late 19th century to the start of the 20th), features wide inequalities of income and wealth, abuses of power by the oligarchs (then called “robber barons”), and a bullied and abused working class.

What happened then? The great pendulum of America swung back. The first Gilded Age was followed by what historians call the Progressive Era. Taxes were raised on the wealthy. Antitrust laws were enacted. Regulations stopped corporate malfeasance. Big money was barred from politics. And reformers — starting with Teddy Roosevelt in 1901 and extending through his fifth cousin, FDR, in 1933 — made life better for average working people.

I don’t know exactly how or when the pendulum will swing back this time, but I am certain it will. And the regressive moral squalor of Trump and his lackeys will be swept into the dustbin of history.

My third source of optimism comes from people I meet all over America, including self-described Republicans in so-called “red” states and “red” cities, who detest what’s happening to the nation and to the world under Trump (as well as under Netanyahu and Putin). There’s a profound decency in the sinews of America. Most Americans are generous and kind.